Sometimes movies slip under the radar of public consciousness undeservedly, gaining no notice despite the many qualities that recommend them. Sometimes they are missed because their material is intractably separated from mainstream culture. I’ve recently come across two films that fit into this latter category. The first deals with different states of human consciousness and the origins of man. The second deals with the true nature of faith and the extremes it can take people to. Both come to conclusions that are in their own way profound but remain removed from the ideas and philosophies expounded in the majority of popular cinema.
1980’s “Altered States” cobbles together a wide range of esoteric material into a film that deals with the history of man and the origins of life. It concerns the brilliant but eccentric physiological researcher Eddie Jessup (William Hurt in his debut role) who experiments with isolation tanks and hallucinogenic drugs. This isn’t too absurd of a beginning, seeing as such research was actually done in the 1960s by scientists such as isolation tank inventor John Lilly.
Jessup believes that through such experimentation he can reach the collective past of mankind, both in a physical and mental sense. The film builds a moody atmosphere through the majority of its first half and like any good horror film holds off on the shocks for as long as possible. The real scares start up when Jessup actually succeeds in regressing himself to a primitive form. Despite warnings from friends and family he continues with the experiments and eventually turns himself into a primitive ape man. Though he reconstitutes, the findings are important enough to try again, only this time he regresses even further back to the beginnings of life.
All of this is presented with an artistic flare by director Ken Russell (best known for the film version of The Who’s “Tommy”). He achieves in this film something that for a long time seemed impossible: filming interesting drug trips. These sequences are scattered throughout the film and add an offbeat flavor to an otherwise stylistically bare film. Many of the special effects still work remarkably well, revealing how effective non-computerized technology can work. The film’s final existential conclusion — that there is nothing beyond life and that human love is the most important emotion — wraps up the story nicely.
The second of the two films is even more extreme in its subject matter. 1976’s “God Told Me To” was directed by B-movie auteur Larry Cohen, a director best known for “Black Caesar” and “It’s Alive.” His ironic form of social commentary was at its peak in this film, which deals with a series of mass murders committed around New York City. Beginning with a frightening sequence involving a rooftop sniper, the film follows a police detective who investigates similar killings. Each time the killer gives the dying confession “God told me to.” What follows is an investigation that reveals a possible messiah from outer space and a few hidden secrets in the detective’s past.
The film is full of odd bits of commentary about religion and faith, including a reporter who philosophizes, “Atheists would like nothing more than for God to appear. That would be the end of all religions.” The idea that all religious figures might be members of an alien race and that their intentions for us might not be the best would be a hard one to swallow from a major Hollywood production. Cohen turns the situation into the kind of comical horror few can pull off effectively.
